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Comparative Chadic Revisited 12 COMPARATIVE CHADIC REVISITED Paul Newman The year 2006 marks the 65th birthday of Russell Schuh, a very well-liked and much admired scholar who has established himself as one of the world’s leading Chadicists. The year also marks the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Newman and Ma’s “Comparative Chadic” (1966), a paper that, as it turned out, played an important role in the development of Chadic linguistics. And looking at milestones, this is the seventieth anniversary of Lukas’s seminal paper (1936), which can be said to mark the true beginning of Chadic studies. It thus seems appropriate to use this occasion to step back and see where we stand as far as our knowledge of Chadic is concerned (see Schuh (2003) for a concise overview of the family, and Pawlak (1994) for a fuller study of comparative morpho-syntax). The question is, what do we know with some degree of certainty and what is it that we still do not know? We certainly ought to understand more about Chadic than we did forty years ago for no other reason than because of the impressive quantity of scholarly research on Chadic since that time. Excluding Hausa—which, strictly speaking one should not since it has always played a major role in our understanding of the family—the scholarly literature contains over 1,000 publications on Chadic. (For a thorough list as of a decade ago, see Newman 1996.) Of these publications, only 10% were published in the century and a half up to 1966 whereas the other 90% were published between then and the present. These modern-day publications include descriptive studies of individual Chadic languages, e.g., Schuh’s (1998) comprehensive grammar of Miya, comparative works, e.g., his insightful analysis of Chadic determiners (Schuh 1983), and lexical reconstructions, e.g., his careful treatment of West Chadic verbs (Schuh 1977). My intention here is to provide a personal assessment of the current situation in comparative Chadic drawing on my years of experience in this field. Hopefully 188 Comparative Chadic Revisited 189 most of what I say can be considered to be fair and reliable, although naturally not everyone will agree fully with everything that I have to say. The presentation will be in the form of plainspoken, straightforward statements, sometimes with illustrative examples, but without the kind of extensive supporting evidence that would be required if the goal were to “prove” that all of the claims were valid. Some of the statements are presented as “facts”. Most (or at least many) of these are generally accepted by almost all Chadicists. Others of these “factual” statements relate either to matters that are less well known or where I personally am prepared to make a strong claim even though other scholars possibly hold alternative views. Where factual statements are not possible, I have either offered hypotheses requiring verification or refutation or else have simply posed questions, i.e., admitted that we are dealing with an aspect of Chadic linguistics about which we as yet know very little. 1. Classification 1.1. Chadic is a valid family, i.e., all (± 130–150) Chadic languages are genetically closer to one another than they are to any language outside of Chadic. Chadic is thus unlike Cushitic, which in its earlier broader conception included groups like “West Cushitic” (= Omotic) and Beja, some of which various scholars now view as independent Afroasiatic families rather than as branches within Cushitic (see Hetzron 1980, for example). 1.2. Chadic is a member of the Afroasiatic (AA) phylum. Whatever doubts may have existed about this even into the 1980s (see Newman 1980 and the review by Cohen 1984), the relationship can now be accepted as fact. (By fact I mean as certain as the inclusion of Iranian, for example, in Indo-European.) 1.3. Where Chadic fits into the AA tree, on the other hand, remains un- ascertained. Two reasonable hypothesis stand out, although there are others that could be explored. The first is that Chadic is a very early offshoot from AA, either the earliest (if Omotic is not the first—either because it is not AA or because it properly belongs within Cushitic) or the second offshoot after Omotic. The other is that Chadic forms a group with Berber, a relationship that is not immediately evident because of the enormous secondary influence of Semitic on Berber and because of the direct and areal influences of sub-Saharan African languages on Chadic extending over millennia. This latter alternative is my own hunch, but at present that is all it is, namely, a hunch. 190 Paul Newman 1.4. The best starting point for Chadic internal classification is Newman (1990), which divides Chadic into four major branches: West, Biu-Mandara (= Central), East, and Masa. 1.4.1. The Masa group, which consists of a small number of very closely related languages, is most likely an independent fourth branch of the family. The evidence for including it within Biu-Mandara, as has been suggested by a number of scholars, is unconvincing. 1.4.2. The West and East branches are coherent groups. Biu-Mandara (Central Chadic), by contrast, is much more heterogeneous, the inclusion of Kotoko, and the subgrouping position of Gidar being particularly problematic. 1.4.3. The basic division of the West branch into subbranch A (which includes Hausa) and subbranch B (which includes Bade) is solid. The main subclassication question that needs to be addressed is the position of the Zaar (= “South Bauchi”) language group. Although these languages have been classified in subbranch B, and at one time were thought to have a particularly close relationship to the Warji (“North Bauchi”) group, they have features that look very A-like. Thus, the Zaar languages possibly need to be extracted from West-B and either placed within West-A, coordinate with the other West-A groups taken as a whole, or else be treated as a third subbranch (West-C) within West Chadic. 1.4.4. Subbranch A of West Chadic has been classified internally as containing four separate groups: Hausa, Angas, Bole, and Ron. The subgrouping relationship of these groups has not been delineated. The hypothesis that strikes me as most likely is that the first cut is Hausa-Angas-Bole vs. Ron, and that the next grouping combines Hausa-Angas as opposed to Bole. 2. Phonology 2.1. Proto-Chadic (PC) had a rich consonant system with 3 phonation types (voiceless, voiced, glottalized) and at least three, and probably four, distinctive positions of articulation, namely labial, alveolar, velar, and possibly palatal. In many languages (e.g., Hausa) the palatals constitute partially conditioned variants of corresponding alveolars (or velars in the case of some languages) as well as being contrastive phonemes in their own right. This was possibly the case in PC as well. PC probably also made use of palatalization (e.g., ky) and labialization (e.g., kw) as secondary articulations. The following table presents common Chadic consonants found throughout the family (ignoring secondary palatalization and labialization). This inventory can serve as a reasonable starting point for reconstructing the PC consonant Comparative Chadic Revisited 191 system. (Comments, both about what is included and what is not, follow the table.) Table 1: Common Chadic consonants p t c ' k b d j g y ∫ fi fi ©/˚ ts dz f s s ' x v z ƒ ¬ m n (¯) Ω r l (= [L] ?) w y 2.1.1. In addition to a full set of stops and fricatives, PC probably had alveolar affricates /ts/ and /dz/, and a voiceless lateral fricative /¬/. 2.1.2. We do not know whether PC distinguished bilabial stops from fricatives, i.e., /p/ from /f/ and /b/ from /v/. Some languages, e.g., Tera, have all four, whereas others, e.g., Hausa, have only two, namely, a voiceless labial, with variant phonetic manifestations, and /b/. My guess is that PC had more than just two, i.e., that it either had all four (/p, f, b, v/) or at least three (/p, b, v/). 192 Paul Newman 2.1.3. PC probably had a full set of nasals (/m, n, (¯), N/) matching the stops and fricatives. These nasals would have only functioned consonantally and not as syllabic nasals. 2.1.4. Whether PC had a set of prenasalized consonants (/mb, nd, nj, Ng/) is uncertain. Evidence points in both directions. These consonants are extremely common, almost ubiquitous, in current-day Chadic languages and occur wide- spread across all branches of the family, thus suggesting that they derive from the proto-language. On the other hand, correspondences between these sounds are erratic and reliable reconstructions containing them lacking. My own guess is that they were not present in the proto-language, but if I turned out to be wrong, I would not be surprised. 2.1.5. Chadic languages typically have two liquids, /r/ and /l/. A number of languages (e.g., Hausa) distinguish between two different R sounds, a flap and a roll, but this is invariably the result of independent parallel innovations. Although /L/ is phonetically the voiced counterpart of /¬/, and in some languages functions as its pair, its historical connection is probably with the liquid /l/. That is, from a historical perspective, /L/ should be thought of as a liquid, albeit with fricative articulation, as contrasted with /¬/, which should be thought of as a fricative related to /s/ and /s/' , albeit with lateral articulation. 2.1.6. The glottalized/laryngealized “implosives” /∫/ and /fi/ are found throughout the family and generally appear as such. Glottalized palatals appear variably as /fiy/ or /’y/, or as ejective /c’/.
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